


deep blue (but you painted me golden)

by tigerlilycorinne



Series: AUgust 2020 Short Fic [16]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, As they all are, F/F, Getting together (kind of), Love Confessions, Pining Ginny, Post-Hogwarts, Post-War, Self-Indulgent, Treasure Hunter Ginny, Treasure Hunters AU, Wanderer Luna
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:47:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25704604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigerlilycorinne/pseuds/tigerlilycorinne
Summary: Ginny loves going treasure hunting with Luna, who goes wherever her heart takes her. This time, it's up a bubbling stream, Luna in the water doesn't exactly help Ginny keep her pining under wraps.It isn't that she doesn't think Luna doesn't care for her, but Luna's always leaving and coming back, wandering wherever she likes whenever she likes. What is Ginny against the calling of Luna's heart?
Relationships: Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley
Series: AUgust 2020 Short Fic [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1856617
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16
Collections: AUgust 2020





	deep blue (but you painted me golden)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Taylor Swift's "Dancing With Our Hands Tied" and vibe completely stolen from Taylor Swift's album, folklore.

The water rushed around Ginny’s ankles, ice-cold. It numbed Ginny’s bare feet, turning her toes pink. The stream took rocks with it, small bits of wood and leaves tickling the tops of her feet and rocks jutting up sharply under her heels as she waded across, her breeches rolled to her knees.

This was nature in its purest form, not the sort of place Ginny went looking for things she might sell. Luna had chosen this direction. 

“I’m looking for Earth’s treasures,” she’d said.

She’d heard this before– this was why they each hunted on their own sometimes: Ginny for a living, Luna for the wonder of it. They had different ideas of treasure. This was why they weren’t together, hunting in the same places for the same things, and Ginny loved the idea of Earth’s treasures, of course, but it was a complicated relationship.

After all, they kept Luna flitting around, never tied to anywhere for long. After all, they kept Luna from _Ginny_.

Luna’s soft white dress had already gotten soaked to the knee as she splashed through, smiling at Ginny, unruffled by the wet hem of her dress. She looked like a daydream or a well-orchestrated photograph, standing in a flowing white dress in the middle of a bubbling stream, surrounded by the green forest and smiling like _that_. 

Sometimes, Ginny wondered if places like this were where Luna disappeared to when she didn’t turn up for weeks. She was the only one who could find all the Earth’s little secrets, Ginny thought.

“We’re not looking for _me_ ,” her light voice teased, and Ginny looked away, back down the direction of the stream. “Not that way.” Luna closed her eyes as Ginny turned back to her, holding her arms out and fluttering her fingers, the water on her arms sparkling in the sunlight that made its way through the leaves above. 

She turned and turned, until her back was to Ginny so Ginny could stare at the rippling dirty blond hair that tumbled loosely down her back. “This way.” She gestured upstream, and Ginny sighed, following her.

It was ridiculous, and Ginny _still_ didn’t believe it worked, really. But Luna always insisted she had a gut feeling, and they always _did_ find things, which was what they did for a living. Once, Luna had led them right to a small cave, and in the floor of it, they’d found a wealth of uncut diamonds.

But while she led them to treasure, it wasn’t always… _treasure._ It was what Luna considered treasure, which could mean anything. She felt a pull towards something beautiful and worth treasuring, and…

“Look,” Luna gasped delightedly as they came to the mouth of the stream. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Oh,” Ginny breathed. It was.

The mouth of the stream opened into a large, serene pool, or maybe a small, serene lake. Silverfish darted around in it, slim and quick. Luna had a way of finding places like this, things that should only exist in the unreal realms of dreams and faeries– the Muggle kind, which Luna was convinced actually existed and Ginny wasn’t so sure. The bank was dotted with flowers, blooming because of the sunlight that came in from the open sky over the lake. 

Ginny could picture her standing here, all alone and happy in the moonlight, while Ginny turned in her bed, all alone and in her bed, wondering where Luna had gone this time.

It wasn’t exactly the monetary kind of treasure, but it was a treasure nonetheless, a picture-perfect moment. 

An Earth treasure.

The kind of moment that only happened once, the very first time someone saw something striking. Like the first moment Ginny stepped into the abandoned castle Luna found once, the lives of the long-dead inhabitants frozen in time, portraits lining the walls and gold lining their drawers or the first time Ginny looked at Luna after she’d been away for months in search of something else while Ginny went on hunting treasure, and Ginny realized she loved Luna. 

So much.

Too much, maybe, for someone like Luna, who came and went and faded in and out of people’s lives like a memory or a moment, like magic.

Luna sighed, looking out over the lake, her arms wrapped around herself. She looked like a Greek statue, the picture of Aphrodite rising from the water, the long lines of her legs visible against her wet dress and the curve of her breast silhouetted against the shining water. 

Ginny swallowed hard and tried to stop imagining running her hands down her smooth back, taking Luna up in her arms and laying her down on the bank, lying there together in the sun, in this achingly private, perfect place.

“It is treasure,” Ginny whispered, coming up behind Luna, laying a tentative hand on Luna’s elbow. Luna leaned into her with half-closed eyes, her face turned up to the sun. 

Ginny knew Luna sometimes worried that Ginny didn’t like it when the treasure she felt when she followed her heart wasn’t material treasure, but Ginny didn’t. Really. They made their living finding things with monetary value, but Ginny loved the other things they found just for them as much as the things she could sell off for money.

Partially because a lot of times, they were really pretty. And partly because Luna loved them so much. She had almost a connection to these secluded, perfect little things, and Ginny loved following her wherever her heart led her, if only to see her face when she found the thing she’d been chasing. It was the light in her eyes, her delighted gasp and her sweet smile, her eager steps and carefree exploration. 

It was _Luna,_ moving like water, smooth and easy, sparkling and curious. 

“This isn’t the treasure, silly,” Luna laughed. Her laugh was high like a brook rushing over stones. “But it is pretty.”

“It isn’t?” Ginny looked around again at the perfect little place they were in. “What–”

“Come on!” Luna grabbed Ginny’s hand, winding their fingers together. Her hand was cold and wet from dipping in the water and holding up her wet skirts. She pulled Ginny towards the center of the pool. “In here!”

Ginny looked doubtfully at the lake. “I don’t have–”

“You’re a witch,” Luna reminded her, nudging her shoulder, and cast a bubble charm on both of their heads. She dove in with her usual grace, slipping into the cold water as if it didn’t bother her one bit, and Ginny jumped off the edge after her, her heartbeat in her throat.

She loved the adventure of all of it, the adrenaline coursing through her veins and countering the cold shock of the water as she crashed in, her whole body getting soaked to the bone in a moment. She looked around to see Luna swimming like she was made for the water, following the fish around, twisting in the water, her mouth open in laughter. 

Ginny felt a surge of affection for this girl, who had hit her twenties without ever letting go of her inner child, who approached the world with honest wonder. 

Luna tipped her head at Ginny’s splash and smiled brightly when Ginny swam over to her, squeezing Luna’s hand. _Let’s go,_ she mouthed, wondering how long Luna’s charm would last. However long, she’d follow Luna, and Luna would make it to the surface in time.

They swam down into the murkier water, the cold slowly fading into the back of her mind as she took in the waving green plants at the bottom, tires from Muggle cars, some old fishing gear, scuttling crabs. The bottom was littered with sticks and stones against the sand as well as man-made junk, and the underwater plants rippled with the small movements of the water mesmerizingly. 

So did Luna’s hair, still loose. Ginny had tied hers up before they even left, but Luna let her hair down, and it swirled around her like a whirlwind. 

Ginny wondered what it would be like to kiss her underwater, whether it would damage the bubble charms, whether Luna would be cold in the water or whether the warmth of their bodies pressed together would be enough. Whether Ginny would be able to pull herself away so they could swim to the surface.

Luna was tugging her had now, turning her head to look at Ginny, her hair floating in a long wave in front of her face as she turned. Ginny followed her finger; she was pointing down into the water at something peaking out of the lake bottom.

 _Look_ , she mouthed.

The edge of something wooden was visible, peeking out from under the sand. Ginny let go of Luna’s hand, swimming forward as hard as she could, her body beginning to feel the pressure from how deep they’d gotten. She tugged on it, and with Luna’s help, managed to pull the rough wooden box out of the sand. 

It wasn’t light, but it wasn’t _really_ heavy. Even so, Luna pulled up the skirt of her dress, pulling her wand out the thin thigh holster there. Ginny, surrounded by a whole entire lake, felt her mouth go dry at the sight of Luna’s legs, bare right up to her hip, the line of her underwear. She looked quickly away and let Luna cast a Lightening Charm on the box so that they could pull it to the surface. 

She could feel the magic of their charms weakening, but they were nearly there now.

The sunlight streaming through the water was beautiful, getting closer and closer, shining long rays of light down into the water the way you could rarely see it from the ground. 

Their charms burst first, and Ginny stopped breathing, pumping her arms, conscious of her wand in her buttoned pocket and how long it would take to take out her wand, how Luna was carrying the box and didn’t have hands to pull out her own.

She exploded out of the water, gasping for half a second, filling her lungs, before diving back down. She looked around, opening her eyes despite the sting of the water. 

Luna was still there, her eyes squeezed shut against the water now that the charm had burst, her hands tight around the box. Ginny swam quickly over, her lungs already threatening, calling for more air.

She grabbed Luna’s arm roughly, dragging her upwards, bloody pumping through her veins like fire. They broke through the surface of the water, gasping and dripping water into their eyes and clinging to each other. 

Luna was as warm as Ginny had imagined she’d be, wrapped around Ginny with the box held carefully behind Ginny so that Luna could press closer, shivering into her. 

She thought about what would’ve happened if Luna had gone frolicking without her, drawn down by the pull of her heart, if maybe Ginny wouldn’t have been there to tug her up, if she’d been off on her own the way she was so often, if instead of turning up on Ginny’s doorstep with delighted eyes and a new shiny trinket, or an old, rusty find, someone else came to Ginny’s doorstep, talking about some woman with dirty-blonde hair they found in the water.

If Luna never came back.

Or even, if she went off somewhere and liked it better, no harm done, and never came back. 

You never knew with Luna.

Ginny swallowed down her fears with the small bit of lake water that had gotten into her mouth, somehow.

They looked at each other– Luna’s eyes red-rimmed from the sting of the impure water, a sparkle bright in them, her hair tumbling wetly down her back and over her shoulder, green underwater plants stuck in it, her eyelashes sparking with water droplets– and laughed.

“Come on,” Luna said for the millionth time that day, her voice breathless. “Let’s see what’s in it.”

They swam lazily over to the ledge and trudged up onto the shore tiredly. The adventure always gave Ginny such a rush– the fun of it, the anticipation, the thrill– and left her satisfyingly exhausted. 

The rough wooden box was about as long as Luna’s arm, as wide as the length of Ginny’s wand, and tall enough to reach the middle of Ginny’s shin as they set in on the ground, shaking the running water off of them and stretching their arms out to the warmth of the sun for a moment before Ginny opened her pocket and pulled out her wand, removing the lightening charm and Conjuring a blanket.

Luna spread it out with a smooth flick of her wand and lay herself out on it as if basking in the sun, smiling with her eyes closed. She looked beautiful in the sunlight– she always looked beautiful, but there was something about her in the sun. As if she belonged to it, and it to her. 

Ginny sat down beside her, feeling faintly ordinary next to this beautiful girl, and opened another of her sealed pockets, pulling out the knife she always carried with her. Luna rolled onto her side to watch Ginny jam the tip of it under the lid of the box and pry it up, slowly, going around the seam of it. She got a splinter or two, brushing the sand off the bottom of it as she turned the thing on its side so she could get all the way around.

“Hmm–” Ginny shoved the knife in harder. “Hold it for me.”

Luna did– she didn’t look it, but she was strong– and made sure it stayed steady as Ginny forced the handle of the knife down, making the box open with a scraping pop. 

“Oh!” Luna exclaimed as they peered in, at the same time as Ginny hissed out a sharp, “ _Yesss.”_

The chest held several things in plastic bags– probably something someone had thrown into the lake deliberately, hoping never to see the things again, long ago. There were letters in a plastic bag, slightly yellow with age, but preserved well without new sunlight or oxygen, but what drew Ginny’s eyes was a plastic bag full of jewelry. It must’ve been a woman’s, she thought, looking through the possessions in the box. Someone who went through a break-up, judging from the gleaming necklaces and bracelets in the bag, the jewels rich in the sunlight.

“Real,” Ginny confirmed, sorting through the jewellery. “Probably also silver, some of them.”

“Ginny,” Luna murmured with pleasure, “Look at these.” She was holding up another plastic bag, full of–

“Bottle caps?”

Luna beamed, so clearly taken by the rusting, twisted pieces of metal, shaking the bag and listening to them clash and clink against each other, the sunlight glinting off of them where the rust hadn’t gotten.

“ _Luna_ ,” Ginny said before she could stop herself, and she reached out, and she pulled Luna over, and she kissed her. She tasted like strawberries, and the chamomile tea she liked, and a little bit like the lake they’d just been in, and she dropped her bottlecaps with a small crash and surprised sound. 

And she kissed back, her hands sliding up Ginny’s sides to her shoulders and then her neck, and then taking out Ginny’s soaking ponytail so her wet hair fell around her messily. 

“You are so strange,” Ginny whispered against Luna’s mouth, “You are so remarkably strange.”

Luna laughed and leaned against Ginny, retrieving her bottlecaps and opening the plastic bag to pour out the bottlecaps, right into her lap. “No, I am just Luna.” Her bare arm was warm against the back of Ginny’s neck as she cast her arm about Ginny’s shoulders, dried in the sun. 

Ginny sighed quietly, contentedly, pressing a kiss to the top of Luna’s head. She wondered if this was a confirmation of feelings. Or if Luna just kissed back. Just because. If they’d go out, or if they’d be friends who kissed. If they’d stay together or if Luna would keep coming and going with her radiance wherever her heart called her. 

If it didn’t matter, because she was here, now with Luna.

“I love you,” she said, staring out at the sunlight glinting off the water. 

Luna smiled. “Yes,” she said, pressing her face into Ginny’s neck. She ran her hand through the bottlecaps, listening to them jingle in her lap. “Of course.”

Ginny blinked and straightened up quickly, looking over at Luna with her heart in her throat, suddenly cold even in the warmth of the sun, cold dread uncurling in her stomach and beginning to creep its tendrils up her spine. “You knew?”

“Of course! Why else would you stare at me like that?”Luna turned to look at her, undisturbed, and her expression faltered when she caught sight of Ginny’s expression, which Ginny knew had to be half fearful and a little bit hurt. “Why, you know I love you too, don’t you?”

Ginny shook her head. “No,” she said, her heart lifting and fluttering, weighed down only by no small amount of confusion and a touch of wariness– Luna was so drifting, flighty, here and there, gone and back, meaning nothing and everything at once. She didn’t mean to be, Ginny knew, she just _was_ , and _I love you_ could just be another fact of life, not a promise, not a commitment, just _we love each other, and that’s that on that._

Would Luna just… up and leave one day? And Ginny would console herself with the knowledge that Luna loved her?

“No,” she said again, “no, I did not.”

Luna’s eyebrows drew together, her mouth tugging down. “Well, I do,” she said. “Why do you think I always come back to you?”

“I don’t know,” Ginny said. She’d never thought about it.

And yet. Luna never regularly visited _anyone_ else, and it wasn’t as if they were professionally connected, not really. Luna’s treasures were so different from Ginny’s and Ginny tagged along when Luna was around because of Luna herself. 

Luna, she never stopped by to say hi to Ron or Neville or Harry, not with any consistency. If she felt like it, if it occurred to her, if it felt right in her little internal compass. 

And Ginny, somehow, was always on that compass.

“I like looking for Earth’s treasures,” Luna said, and Ginny nodded. “Ginny, _you’re_ a treasure,” she said, like it was obvious. 

Ginny _felt_ like a treasure, just from those words around her. A glow, a golden light inside of her, chasing away the cold of the water on her skin. _Oh,_ she thought _, that makes sense._

That was why Luna always came back, taking her places, showing her wonders, holding her hand and bringing her places Ron and Neville and everyone else she was friends with never got to see. It wasn’t because she was a _treasure hunter_ , it was because she was _one of the treasures_.

One of the wonders so great, they drew Luna back time and time again, at wild times of the night and the brightest hour of the day, in the middle of the week and in the soft moments of the weekend, calling Luna away wherever she was bound for. 

Ginny was one of those– one of the places Luna’s heart took her.

“Will you show me the rest of the treasures someday?” she asked Luna, when she’d gotten her voice back.

Luna considered. “Well, you come looking with me,” she said, “But you’re right– there are more. I’ll take you,” she decided, but added warningly, “None of them are quite as wondrous as you.”

Ginny felt as if the world could swallow her into it, teach her all of its secrets, like she was a little bit part of everything. She wondered if this was how Luna felt all the time, like the world was a little bit hers, and she was a little bit the world’s and _oh_ , Ginny was all Luna’s too, because Luna _was_ everything, in the only ways that mattered. 

“That’s good,” Ginny whispered into Luna’s sun-dried hair, still soft. “That means you’ll always come back to me.”

**Author's Note:**

> In case you couldn't tell, I'm a little bit (a lot) gay for Luna...  
> You can find me loving Luna on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/tigerlilycorinne-drarry-me)


End file.
